Diccionario Cervantes by Jean Canavaggio

Abstract

Reviewed by: Diccionario Cervantes by Jean Canavaggio Howard Mancing (bio) Jean Canavaggio. Diccionario Cervantes. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2020. 509 pp. ISBN-13: 978-8415245957. This is a beautiful book. It is also a big book: over 500 pages, measuring 8.5” x 10,” 2” thick, and weighing 4.5 pounds. It is lavishly illustrated; in fact, it is divided equally between text and image, about half the pages devoted to each. The body of the work is followed by a Cuadro genealógico de los Cervantes, a Cronología, and (an incomplete and uneven) list of Obras de referencia (all occupying a total of 12+ pages). The images include reproductions of works of art (paintings, drawings, engravings, etchings, lithographs, posters, tapestries, and more); texts (letters, documents, manuscripts); photographs of persons and places; and various other things (maps, photographs, music scores, movie stills, comics, newspapers). The visual attractiveness of the volume is impressive and, in some ways, the best part of the book is its rich collection of high-quality images, many of them familiar, others not seen before (at least, by me). The 136 double-column entries in the dictionary vary in length from a few lines to ten columns of text. The longest entries (not including images) are for the following topics: Cautiverio, Cine, Esoterismo, Letras hispanoamericanas, Prisiones (the longest single entry in the book), Sevilla, and Valladolid; these entries average 8.5 columns in length. The entries for Cervantes’s works— Comedias, Entremeses, Galatea, Novelas ejemplares, Numancia, Poesías, Persiles y Sigismunda, and Don Quijote, and Viaje del Parnaso—average 6 columns each. There is (as I know from personal experience) no way the author of a dictionary or an encyclopedia can include everything worthy of mention. Even the monumental Gran Enciclopedia Cervantina, currently 12 volumes (A through Sandoval y Rojas, Don Bernardo de) and more than 11,000 words long does not have an entry for everything and everyone. Jean Canavaggio has of necessity made choices about what and whom to include. It would not be fair for a reviewer to concentrate on what he has not done more than on what he has done so well. If the entries in this Diccionario Cervantes seem to give preference to French writers, artists, and scholars, so be it; that is Canavaggio’s choice. But not to point out a few significant omissions and distortions of emphasis or importance would be worse than ignoring them. There are superb entries on dozens of subjects of significance to the life and works of Cervantes in this dictionary: Atribuciones; Brujas y hechiceras; Converso, Origen; Documentos; España; Gitanos; Indias; Judíos; Lepanto; [End Page 208] Moriscos; Negocios; Óperas; Picaresca; Religión; Saavedra; and Traductores del Quijote. These and many other accurate and informative entries illustrate the breadth and subtlety of the author’s presentation. They are, for the most part, a delight to read and can be appreciated by general readers and Cervantes scholars alike. In addition, there are entries for members of Cervantes’s family and for others who play an important role in his life and times: Agi Morato, Felipe II, Don Juan de Austria, Juan López de Hoyos, Antonio de Sigura, Lope de Vega, and others. There are entries for two important literary genres important in the time of Cervantes—Libros de caballerías and Picaresca; Tirante el Blanco has an entry, but not Amadís de Gaula. There are entries for literary theorists and scholars: Américo Castro, Michel Foucault (?), György Lukács, and José Ortega y Gasset. Missing are two of the most important theorists of the novel and Cervantes’s place in it: Friedrich von Schlegel and Mikhail Bakhtin (also missing in the Gran Enciclopedia). The absence of the latter is particularly unfortunate, as no one has featured Cervantes and Don Quixote more centrally or with more original insightfulness. There are 21 entries for writers, mostly novelists, but with an uneven distribution and with some quirky inclusions: 8 English, 4 French, 3 Latin American (included in the Letras hispanoamericanas entry), 2 each Russian, German, and USA, and 1 Spanish. Azorín and Borges (the only Spanish American writer with...